“After a devastating few months, the latest COVID surge is easing across much of the world. But while most countries are getting better, Russia is actually getting worse. And for one main reason. ‘A significant percentage of Russians fear the vaccine more than the virus,’ Anna Gotlib, a Russian-born philosopher and bioethicist at Brooklyn College, told The Daily Beast. And the Russian government, rather than battling vaccine skepticism, has actually encouraged it. All in the hope of scoring a quick buck and owning the West. Globally, authorities counted around 3 million new coronavirus infections last week – down from 4.6 million at the peak of the surge in early September. Deaths are declining, too. There were 49,000 COVID deaths last week, down from 69,000 six weeks ago. In Russia, however, the trends are heading in the opposite direction, based on even the most conservative official figures. On Wednesday, the country of 146 million people set all-time official records for daily cases (around 36,000) and deaths (nearly 1,100).”

“And it’s possible the actual numbers are worse than the official ones. Critics have credibly accused Moscow of cooking the books in order to downplay the seriousness of the crisis and insulate the government from criticism. ‘There’s a gap between reported and real COVID-19 cases and mortality everywhere, but based on comparisons of numbers of deaths in 2020 to 2021 with previous years, that gap is wider in Russia – and some other post-socialist countries – than anywhere else in the world,’ said Virginia Commonwealth University political science professor Judy Twigg. The pandemic is so bad in Russia that the Kremlin, which for months resisted mandating commonsense public health measures, ordered a 10-day partial lockdown in Moscow starting Thursday. But the lockdown is a band-aid on a gaping – and largely self-inflicted – wound” – Daily Beast.